


The Lobster Robot That Steals Knives

by JacarandaBanyan



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [9]
Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Bucky and Tony become robot parents, Bucky doesn't have many skills to teach a robot, Crack, Everyone's still happy as a team, It takes Steve a little while to notice but to be fair he's distracted, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, POV Outsider, Prompt Fill, Robots, Tony Stark Bingo 2018, and fall in love, but he works with what he's got, civil war never happened, lobster robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 14:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16518047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: “What is that?” He asked. “And what made that noise?”“He’s a new bot,” Tony said. His voice radiated that pride and happiness it got whenever he was talking about his creations. “Winter Wonder and I have been working on him all day. I’ve been taking care of the engineering, and your buddy’s been teaching it. The little guy got a little too enthusiastic about learning one of Sergeant Snowflake here’s moves, and tried it on one of my more delicate machines. Which, you know, no big deal, I only had it out because I was going to throw it away. It was pretty old.”“Why does it have a knife?” Steve demanded. “Tony, why did you give your robot a knife?”





	The Lobster Robot That Steals Knives

**Author's Note:**

> Tony Stark Bingo Prompt: Outsider POV
> 
> As you may have noticed, I'm trying to get these bingo fills out before the even closes. I'm sorry for neglecting my other works, especially And The Tide Comes Rushing In- I promise I'm working on it!

Steve was pretty sure he was going to pace a hole right through the Tower floor and tumble into whatever SI lab or office was beneath him, but he needed to do something with his nervous energy and the gym was still being remodeled after Thor accidentally summoned a lightning storm in it yesterday, so this was all he has.

It’s not that he thought Tony would go so far as to  _ hurt  _ Bucky. Everyone agreed that nothing the Winter Soldier had done was Bucky’s fault, including Tony. Tony was the one who  _ found _ him, using some sort of AI tracking thing and brought him back to New York. Tony had welcomed him into his Tower just as he had the other Avengers.

It’s just that Tony’s face when he saw the mission report from December 16, 1991 reminded Steve of blood that’s frozen into the bleakest, sharpest ice you’ve ever seen. 

His and Tony’s relationship had already been strained when everything came to light; Steve had half-believed Tony would fire up the repulsers and kill either him or Bucky where they stood. Instead he’d muttered something about teammates telling each other things and flown off for a few days. Steve lived in fear of seeing that face again. He’d come so close to just not telling him, and he shuddered to think what might have happened if he’d held his silence.

But what if he wasn’t over it? What if that ice had merely retreated beneath the surface, hidden even from Tony himself, Tony who always worked so hard to forgive and move forward, always forward. 

Bucky had been in the workshop with Tony for hours. Steve  _ knew  _ he had no right to think that Tony would take advantage of him while they’re alone together down there. He  _ knew _ from hours and hours spent watching Tony test and repair the team’s gear have taught him that Tony took his creations very seriously, and would never purposefully sabotage them. 

But they had been down there for so long.

He tried to be optimistic. Maybe they’re just talking. Getting comfortable with each other.  _ Isn’t that what you wanted, _ a nasty voice whispered in the back of his mind,  _ for them to be friends? For the new and the old to fit together so perfectly you’ll start to believe you can make your own past and present do the same? _

What he shouldn’t do was go down there. In fact, he shouldn’t even be waiting around up here like he thought something bad was going to happen. Bucky’s trigger words were gone and Tony didn’t blame him and they weren’t going to kill each other.

**_Boom._ **

The floor shook and dishes clinked together in the kitchen. An alarm blared for about two seconds before abruptly ceasing. 

Before he’d even processed what happened he was flying down the stairs to the workshop at top speed. He wrenched open doors that Jarvis failed to open fast enough and dented handrails as he vaulted around corners, never once slowing down enough for his mind to catch up with his muscles. 

At last he skidded to a stop in front of the workshop entrance and threw the door open, ready to put himself between his friends if necessary. 

He was immediately sprayed in the face with fire extinguisher foam. 

“Dum-E, no, no fire! Why would Steve even be on fire, he wasn’t here until just now?”

Tony’s voice cascaded over him, alternating between berating Dum-E and making asides to Bucky, who hummed in agreement. He spit foam out of his mouth, trying not to inhale any. A metal hand grabbed his, and he went tense then relaxed so fast he could almost hope Bucky hadn’t noticed. While Tony continued to talk and talk, Bucky lead him over to a sink and washed the foam off his face. 

Once his face was clear again, he blinked open his eyes. 

Bucky had silently crossed the room to return to Tony’s side. The two of them stood around the remains of some piece of equipment that seemed to have imploded spectacularly. He vaguely recognized the label on one of the flattened sections from one of the more delicate instruments he’d helped Tony move once upon a time. 

Standing next to it, little metal legs clacking on the tiles and metal whiskers undulating, was a robot shaped like a lobster. It clutched a knife in its claws, and waved it slowly but menacingly a few centimeters above the lab floor. 

“What is that?” He asked. “And what made that noise?”

“He’s a new bot,” Tony said. His voice radiated that pride and happiness it got whenever he was talking about his creations. “Winter Wonder and I have been working on him all day. I’ve been taking care of the engineering, and your buddy’s been teaching it. The little guy got a little too enthusiastic about learning one of Sergeant Snowflake here’s moves, and tried it on one of my more delicate machines. Which, you know, no big deal, I only had it out because I was going to throw it away. It was pretty old.”

The lobster robot waved the knife again to illustrate Tony’s point.

“Why does it have a knife?” Steve demanded. “Tony, why did you give your robot a knife?”

Tony laughed and threw up his hands. 

“Don’t look at me, I didn’t give it to him. He stole it from your buddy here’s boot.” He slapped Bucky on the shoulder, smiling as though nothing alarming had happened at all. Even stranger, Bucky smiled, briefly back.

“Why did it steal Bucky’s knife?” He turned to Bucky, who hopefully would be more cooperative than Tony in answering him. “And why did you  _ let _ it steal your knife?”

“We’ve gotta help him learn, Stevie,” Bucky said. His voice was still rusty and odd-sounding, but much better than it had been even a week ago. “Tony says that’s what you’ve got to do with learning systems. You’ve got to let them learn. If that means I’ve gotta stand here nice and still and let him steal my knife, then that’s a sacrifice I’m prepared to make.”

“Why would you teach it to steal knives?”

“Well, I don’t really have a lot of good, desk work-type skills to teach a robot, so we’re sticking to my strengths.” He smiled again, and Steve felt his (perfectly reasonable) ire involuntarily melting away like late-spring snow. “Don’t be mad, Stevie. Tony and I are just having a little fun.”

Steve smiled back despite himself. 

“I’m glad you guys are getting along, I really am. But that doesn’t change the fact that you guys have been down here all day making a robot lobster that steals knives.”

“Don’t say that so judgmentally, Steve,” Tony laughed. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“Oh, if I’m hurting his  _ feelings…” _ Steve grinned, only to be interrupted when Bucky punched him lightly with his flesh hand. 

For a moment, all was right with the world. His two best friends were getting along like a house on fire, and both of them were slowly opening up to him again. He’d missed Bucky like a limb, and after that first victorious Battle of New York, it felt like Tony had only grown further from him. But here and now, he had them both, and all was well.

* * *

As just about anyone could have predicted, the robot ended up causing some problems. It rapidly grew to be an incredibly efficient knife-stealer, much to Natasha’s consternation. It frequently escaped the workshop, carrying Tony’s more knife-like tools in its metal claws. After Bruce complained at dinner that it was getting into his lab and disrupting his work, Tony finally caved and said he’d work on a solution.

“Can’t you just reprogram it to not leave the workshop?” Natasha asked irritably. 

“Well, I mean I  _ could,” _ Tony replied, “but he’s a learning system. Eventually he’s going to re-learn that we keep knives in the kitchen.”

“Not if you  _ don’t let it go in the kitchen,” _ Clint called the other end of the table.

“Nah, he would figure it out again. He would see me looking at security feeds and make the connection.”

“Maybe you could program it to not steal knives,” Bruce threw out. 

“Stealing knives is the core of his being! That’s literally all he’s programmed to do!” Tony replied. 

“Yeah, you can’t just take away the very core of his being,” Bucky chimed in.

Steve didn’t really want to side against his two friends, especially on the topic that had magically healed the low-key hostility and fear that permeated the air between them since Bucky had escaped HYDRA and the nasty details of his time in captivity had come to light. But the two morons were seriously defending a robot lobster that stole knives. 

“Well, then, don’t reprogram it,” he said, trying to sound as calm as possible. “So long as you can find a way to contain it, there’s no need.”

“I’ll put Dum-E on it,” Tony said. “The knives can’t really hurt him, and he needs to feel important sometimes.”

Everyone reluctantly agreed to this until one day they had to actually go and put it into practice. When the robot lobster, since named Dagger, Conqueror of Elevator Cables and Master of the Blade, next attempted to storm the kitchen, Dum-E followed it, claw raised like a widely-spread beak of a bird of prey and shrieking and beeping loudly. However, he obviously had a little too much fun, or else he would have caught it the first time he caught up with it. Instead, he let it escape several times to keep the chase going, allowing it to nearly reach the kitchen before finally bringing down his claw and capturing it. 

After that debacle, Steve pulled Bucky aside.

“I know you don’t want to reprogram the robot lobster,” he started.

“His name is Dagger, Conqueror of Elevator Cables and Master of the Blade,” Bucky said, interrupting him. His eyes danced with light that so recently had been completely absent from his gaze. 

“Right, right, Dagger. Well, you and Tony had so much fun making him, that I thought perhaps you’d be interested in a different sort of project.”

“Oh?” Bucky’s eyebrows rose. “Since when did you take an interest in engineering?”

“Since you two started bonding over it.”

Bucky’s face softened, and he nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like you. You always forced yourself to be interested in all that sci-fi stuff I liked.”

“When did you remember that?” He perked up. They’d all been warned that there was no guarantee that Bucky would recover everything that he’d lost, so each memory to resurface was precious.

“A few nights ago. Tony was recommending some bedtime reading for when he’s away and I can’t sleep. Some of the older titles were familiar.” Bucky blushed a little. “Tony’s been really great, you know? He doesn’t push. Or, well, he  _ does, _ all the time actually, just not on the parts I don’t want him to push on.”

For a split second, his face almost looked the way it did back in the thirties when he’d met someone who’d absolutely blown him away and he wanted to march across the room and ask them on a date. Then it was gone, so quickly Steve almost believed it had never been there at all.

He shook his head, and looked back at Steve. “So what’s this project of yours?”

Steve was tempted to ask about the blush. The old Bucky had been a flirt and a romantic, but since escaping HYDRA he’d been painfully reluctant to so much as let another person into his personal space. Was that part of him coming back to? Was it coming back for  _ Tony Stark, _ a man not exactly known for the romantic side of dating?

Instead, he carefully shelved that thought for later. Whatever his two friends were up to down there in the lab, it was helping Bucky.

“Why don’t you two go and re-conquer the elevator cables so Dagger can’t use them to escape?”

Bucky grinned. “I’ll see what we can do.”

* * *

It wasn’t all that long before Bucky’s past came back for him.

Steve cursed himself as he barreled down the stairs of the Tower towards the lobby, where Bucky and Tony were facing off with a HYDRA sleeper agent come to retrieve the Winter Soldier. 

At the very least, Tony could summon his armor to him now, Steve thought guiltily. He didn’t want his friends to have to fight, but it would absolutely destroy Bucky if he hurt Tony under HYDRA’s influence. 

But when he skidded into the scene of the confrontation, he was met not by the empty shell of his best friend being forced to attack Tony, but a sweating man backed into a corner, trembling before a familiar robot lobster, who was silently threatening the man with a very large knife. His two friends stood off to the side, giggling and shouting advice to the robot. Every time the man opened his mouth to try and speak, Dagger, Conqueror of Elevator Cables and Master of the Blade waved its knife menacingly and he fell silent. 

“Look at that, Sergeant Snowflake,” Tony stage whispered. “Our little robot child is all grown up and holding intruders at knifepoint.” 

His body was wrapped as protectively around Bucky’s as possible, given that Tony was so much smaller than him. His arms were slowly nudging him away from the man in the corner, supporting him without caging him in. Steve wasn’t sure if this was merely the first time he’d seen Tony this tender, or if this was as special as he thought it might be.

“Good for him, defending us from evil,” Bucky stage whispered back. His voice trembled a little. “How about we get out of here and let Steve and Dagger deal with this guy, huh?”

Tony bent over and kissed the top of Bucky’s ear- how long had they been together?- and lead him over to an elevator. Just before they disappeared, he gave Steve a look over Bucky’s head. 

Steve shook himself out of his surprise, then turned to the HYDRA agent cowering in the corner. The faster he cleaned this up, the faster he could go help calm Bucky down. 

* * *

“So. You and Tony, huh?”

Bucky slapped him, but there was no force behind it. “Like you didn’t see that coming. We went and built ourselves a kid and everything.”

Tony’s face when he first read that terrible mission report flashed through Steve’s mind. 

“I absolutely did not. Tony’s always like that with his creations.”

Bucky laughed quietly. “You’re right, he loves those bots to pieces. And to be fair, I didn’t think it’d ever happen in the beginning either, what with everything that happened. But it was like he’d erased it from his mind, you know? When I saw him next after he found out, he was all smiles and nicknames. It was a little forced, but he but on a good show, you know? 

“And then suddenly it wasn’t forced at all.”

Steve wrapped an arm around him and pulled him against his side.

“I’m happy for you two. I hope this works out.”

“I hope so too, Stevie. I hope so too.”


End file.
